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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Well, the name of this post was slightly derived from the title of a friend of mine's post. But the content is WAY different. The famous Rucker Park is a playground street ball court on 155th and 8th Avenue in NY. Many of the greatest players of all time have played on the time-hardened concrete of Rucker Park. Players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt "The Stilt" Chamberlain, and even Julius Erving (Dr. J).

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int main(){I've never been there, of course, but the setting happens to be rendered beautifully in 3D in one of the best arcade-style basketball video games ever made. Which brings me to my next point and the actual topic of this post. Why must the computer treat me like I'm not as good as it is in NBA Street V3? I play the game on the hardest difficulty level possible, and yet and still the same thing happens. Here is the scenario:

{The game starts, and I start whoopin' that azz. In an average of 3 dunks I'm already at GameBreaker #1. Fine and dandy. Same thing every possession. I get the ball (or steal the ball), I do some tricks, I juke a dude, bounce the ball off his head, jump in the air from the 3-point line, behind the back while turning 720 degrees, pass it between my legs to my hommie who jumps in the air for a high-flying alley-oop to finish off a dunk, etc.

::BUT

When the computer finally gets its GameBreaker up, what happens? Suddenly I CANT catch him to save my life. I can’t steal or nothin’. If I end up with the ball, it is stripped _immediately_. All my tricks are countered, etc. My issue is that I would very much like the computer to play at that level ALL the time, not just when it wants to GameBreak on me. How am I supposed to feel like I've accomplished something when the computer makes it blatantly obvious that it’s pulling its punches???

I know for a fact that the Gamecube version is affected, and can guess with reasonable accuracy that all other versions are affected (as well as many other games for that matter). I want to play a game in which the computer is trying its absolute hardest to beat me (without cheating that is. I think games do that too, but that’s a different post altogether). So until then, I look forward to those rare times when I let the computer get to a GameBreaker, just so I can experience its true potential, even if its just for 3 seconds right before they triple-dunk on my maxed out custom character (#3 The Natural)